Brother Alive

Books

*In 1990, three boys are born, unrelated but intertwined by circumstance: Dayo, Iseul, and Youssef.* They are adopted as infants and live in a shared bedroom perched atop a mosque in one of Staten Island's most diverse and precarious neighborhoods, Coolidge. The three boys are a conspicuous trio: Dayo is of Nigerian origin, Iseul is Korean, and Youssef indeterminately Middle Eastern, but they are so close as to be almost inseparable. Nevertheless, Youssef is keeping a secret from his brothers: he has an imaginary double, a familiar who seems absolutely real, a shapeshifting creature he calls Brother. Brother is both a balm for the young boy and a curse-he provides solace to Youssef but demands information in exchange. The boys' adoptive father, Imam Salim, is popular in the community, known for his radical sermons extolling the virtues of opting out of Western ideologies. But he is uncharismatic at home, a distant father who spends evenings in his study with whiskey-laced coffee, writing letters to his ...